During the past twenty years there has been a burgeoning interest in late Qing and early Republican intellectual history and literature as part of a larger project of rethinking the nature of Chinese modernity. These periods are particularly germane to such concerns because it was during them that Chinese writers were involved in the dual projects of importing ideas from the West and re-interpreting indigenous Chinese texts in response to the various political and economic crises. The edited volume, Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China, makes a contribution to the field of modern Chinese cultural history by focusing on a somewhat neglected side of late Qing and early Republican studies, namely the intersection of literary imagination and constructions of gender. The essays in this volume cover a wide variety of topics. The editors have divided them into three sections, which are labeled respectively, “Transformations of Gender Roles,” “Transformations of Genres,” and “The Production of Gender and Genres in New Print Media.” With this thoughtful structure, the editors begin with the problem of gender, move to the problem of genres and then, in the third section, showcase five essays that synthesize these two aspects. The editors also provide a helpful introductory essay, in which they highlight some common themes and concerns that pervade the volume. The volume's essays are many and diverse. In this review I will focus on the introduction and certain representative works.

In the introductory chapter, the editors contextualize the various essays in light of the transformations in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China, mentioning intellectuals who “sought some sort of creative synthesis involving both the past and the present, a synthesis that went beyond the tiyong 體用 model, assumed diverse forms, and changed over time, frequently in unanticipated ways” (p. 1). Here tiyong of course refers to the Self-Strengthening Movement and the attempt to import Western technology while keeping intact Chinese culture (Confucianism). The editors contend that their volume makes an important breakthrough by focusing on authors who seek a creative synthesis, an argument that suggests an opposition between tradition and modernity and encourages us to see such categories as fluidly existing “in a vast crucible of choices” (p. 2). They examine how writers in the late Qing made such choices from three different perspectives, namely, the construction of gender roles, the development of literary genres and the emergence of new forms of print media, subjects that generally have been neglected in the study of late Qing and Republican literature. Recent studies that treat the above themes do so in a parochial manner that does not touch on larger issues such as how to rethink late Qing and early Republican history.

The essays in this volume show how reformers and writers drew on both existing forms and new genres, such as new fiction and essays, in order to express new visions of and for women. Below I will briefly focus on three essays that exemplify the complex relationship between new conceptions of women and novel views on artistic practice. These three works also share the attempt to question the hegemony of the nation-state, another theme that runs through the volume.

In her essay, “‘Tossing the Brush’? Wu Zhiying (1868–1934) and the Uses of Calligraphy,” Hu Ying contrasts the practice of the famous female late Qing revolutionary, Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875–1907), who discarded her brush in order to join the military ranks, with Wu Zhiying 呉芝瑛, a female calligrapher who chose not [to] “toss the brush”. Through her study of Wu's calligraphy, Hu tries to question the dichotomies between old and new, which in turn is linked to the dichotomy between traditional artistic pursuits and modern political endeavors. In particular, she hopes to look at the historically specific political meaning of Wu's calligraphy.

Hu shows how Wu's artistic work entailed a political dimension that is obscured by the simple opposition between the brush and military action. More specifically, Hu argues, the idea of opposing traditional artistic pursuits with political practice is usually part of a larger project to subsume politics in general, and women's talent in particular, to the nation-state. In Hu's words, “Women's talent then became firmly and directly linked to nationalism and modern progress so that women's education … became a platform with very wide appeal as literati-intellectuals of diverse political stripes supported even as they denounced this or that strain of learning as useless” (p. 65). Hu argues that through her calligraphy, Wu “resisted the interpellations of powerful forces even as she engaged them (whether such forces were represented by imperial patronage or nationalist discourse)” (p. 85). Moreover, she often drew on traditional forms of calligraphy in order to make political gestures, such as when she composed a piece to commemorate the death of Qiu Jin. At the same time, her calligraphy transcended the nation-state by being linked to Buddhist practice, as when she meditatively transcribed the Surangama sutra.

We see elements of this idea of transcending nationalism in Grace S. Fong's essay, “Reconfiguring Time, Space, and Subjectivity: Lü Bicheng's Travel Writings on Mount Lu.” Fong's contribution analyzes the works of the female author Lü Bicheng 呂碧城, who, like Wu Zhiying, defied both traditional mores related to her class and resisted the prevailing nationalist discourse. At a time of ardent nationalism, Lü Bicheng developed a cosmopolitan vision, which she expressed in writings about the famous site Mount Lu 廬山. While many famous male Chinese authors had written about Mount Lu, Lü develops a reading of this space as inflected by a foreign presence and expressing multiple temporalities.

Xia Xiaohong continues this theme of questioning the nation-state in her essay on the late Qing feminist and anarchist He Zhen 何震 (1884–?), “Tianyi Bao and He Zhen's Views on Women's Revolution.” He Zhen's writings bring us to another genre, specifically, polemical essays in the periodical Tianyi bao 天義報 (“Journal of Natural Justice”), founded in 1907. The journal was the hub of a group now known as the Tokyo anarchists. In contrast to the westernized Paris anarchists, the Tokyo anarchists were more critical of imperialism and Western culture. He Zhen's husband, Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919), was famous for his classical studies. Both He Zhen and Liu Shipei initially combined classical scholarship with the promotion of ethnic nationalism against Western imperialism and the Manchu empire. However, by 1907, He and Liu began to affirm anarchism and feminism.

Xia notes that Tianyi bao was concerned both with equality between the sexes and with the overthrow of the state, contending that these two were contradictory and that this contradiction, in fact, might point to a fundamental tension in Chinese modernity. Specifically, Xia shows that the contradiction between feminism and anarchism in He Zhen's writings is closely connected to the opposition between tradition and modernity. He Zhen explains her feminist project and the name of the journal as follows: “Our purpose is to destroy the old society and practice human equality. In addition to women's revolution, we also advocate racial, political and economic revolutions. Thus its name is Tianyi bao” (p. 297). He Zhen argues that the oppression of women by men is at the heart of other oppressions and that “men are women's mortal enemy” (p. 299). She advocates a kind of women's revenge that involves returning to the natural state of equality.

He Zhen connects the existence of social inequality to the existence of the state in the following manner:

Xia points out that He Zhen's commitment to both anarchism and feminism leads to a contradiction in terms of concrete political practice. We have seen above that He appears to put at the forefront the struggle of women against men, but in other essays she argues for the primacy of anarchism:

He Zhen's stress on anarchism involves her conflicting views about traditional Chinese thought and culture. We have seen above that she opposes traditional values to gender equality, but both He Zhen and Liu Shipei connected their anarchist ideal to Daoism rather than to modern society. Xia explains that on this point they were influenced by the following comments by Leo Tolstoy: “Dao in ancient Chinese philosophy is the fundamentally humanistic principle, and is similar in spirit to the principle of freedom … Thus Western Europeans who lived under capitalism ‘have completely lost their freedom’” (p. 312). Following this logic, Liu and He argue that although the present government is corrupt, this could actually end up being a benefit. “It is because of the corruption and inaptitude of its current government that the Chinese people have been able to somewhat escape its control and thus enjoy a small degree of freedom … Thus the political custom of present day China is closest to anarchism.” They consequently concluded, “For China to practice anarchism is not difficult. And China should therefore be the first to practice it among all the countries in the world” (p. 313). In other words, corrupt government has obscured the Dao. The possibility of anarchism lies concealed in a natural realm that lies behind official venality.

I have delved into He Zhen's dilemma in some detail because it conveys a key theme of the book, namely the conflicting views and valuations of tradition and modernity. Many of the contributors to this volume connect the affirmation of modernity and critique of tradition to some type of affirmation of the nation-state. Along these lines, we have seen Hu Ying's interpretation of Wu Zhiying's calligraphy as partially resisting the nation-state, and also Grace Fong's discussion of Lü Bicheng's cosmopolitanism.

Xia's discussion of He Zhen brings out the tension between tradition and modernity in relation to gender and anarchism and also points to a direction for further research. As a whole, the essays in the volume critically engage the dichotomy between tradition and modernity, with the editors themselves going so far as to state that the significance of the reform era has “nothing to do with narratives that focus on simple binary oppositions such as ‘China’ versus ‘the West’ or ‘tradition’ versus ‘modernity’” (p. 25). They also point out that juxtapositions such as those between “tradition” and “modernity” actually “framed many of the discussions and debates of the late Qing period” (p. 25). As such, perhaps one needs to understand how and why such debates were produced in relation to the larger global context. Although the essays in this volume attempt to address this problem by invoking the nation-state, Xia's discussion of anarchism suggests the nation-state or nationalist ideology is not sufficient to explain the emergence of dichotomies such as tradition and modernity, since the scope and ideals associated with such concepts have aspects that go beyond national boundaries. A full discussion of this topic exceeds the scope of this review, but I should note that the essays seem, implicitly, to call for a theoretical framework that is capable of making sense of modernity at a global level. Certainly that is an appealing project, because one then could avoid the dual pitfalls of, on one hand, modernization theories that assume the history of European institutions as a model, and on the other, the indeterminacy haunting many contemporary works that fail to treat the category of modernity as a means to deconstruct the opposition between tradition and modernity. By addressing modernity at a global level, one could further analyze how gender is constructed in relation to the new categories connected to the global capitalist world.

This is of course a minor criticism. The essays gathered here contribute to a richer understanding of the intersection between gender and genre in late Qing and early Republican China. Moreover, they provide extremely rich materials to rethink the way in which China's entry into the global capitalist system of nation-states entailed various forms of cultural transformation. Hence the volume should be of interest to all serious scholars of Chinese literature, cultural history and intellectual history.